Human hair becomes soiled due to its contact with the surrounding environment and from the sebum secreted by the scalp. The soiling of hair causes it to have a dirty feel and an unattractive appearance. The soiling of the hair necessitates shampooing with frequent regularity.
Shampooing cleans the hair by removing excess soil and sebum. However, shampooing can leave the hair in a wet, tangled, and generally unmanageable state. Once the hair dries, it is often left in a dry, rough, lusterless, or frizzy condition due to removal of the hair's natural oils and other natural conditioning and moisturizing components. The hair can further be left with increased levels of static upon drying, which can interfere with the combing and result in a condition commonly referred to as “fly-away hair”, or contribute to an undesirable phenomenon of “split ends”. Further, chemical treatments, such as perming, bleaching, or coloring hair, can also damage hair and leave it dry, rough, lusterless, and damaged.
A variety of approaches have been developed to condition the hair. A common method of providing conditioning benefits to the hair is through the use of conditioning agents such as cationic surfactants and polymers, high melting point fatty compounds, low melting point oils, silicone compounds, and mixtures thereof.
However, there still exists the opportunity to increase the conditioning benefits delivered through the conditioning compositions. There still exists a need for hair-conditioning compositions which provide improved silicone deposition and/or improved conditioning via friction reduction. Particularly, a need still exists to provide a conditioning composition with enhanced benefits such as hair shine, softness, dry hair smoothness, hair strand alignment (e.g. minimize frizziness), and ease of combing. Also, a need still exists for a conditioning composition that is effective for providing conditioning benefits to hair that is damaged by natural, environmental factors, as well as chemical hair treatments.